Being Someone Else For the Day is Harder Than You Think

I recently went to a poverty simulation for Professional Development, even if this wasn't for Professional Development, I most likely would have went anyway. This really changed my outlook on life, and its great to know as a future teacher to understand how less fortunate children and families feel. The point of this was exactly that. We were assigned a person of a community to be apart of a family. All of the families struggled, and we had to learn and figure out as a family how to live our lives with barely anything. My character was a 16 year old pregnant girl. My parents were always out of the house, so I had to watch my brothers. My boyfriend wasn't around much, because he was doing whatever he needed to for his family. I still had to attend school as a pregnant teen. That was very difficult considering I was due in three months and was very anxious to graduate. When I was on a week break from school, I wasn't even able to work because I couldn't afford transportation and I had to watch my brother, since he was only 8. This was a really great learning experience to be in someone else shoes for 3 hours. I hope my the school does the again next semester, I would love to act as another character from another family.